Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Fascist Italy
was one of the main Axis powers. At the start of WWII Mussolini remained
neutral but he joined the war in 1940 after it was obvious that France would be
defeated. From then on Italian troops fought in the Balkans, against the Soviet
Union and in North Africa.

Mussolini’s
adventurism led to military reverses as the Italian economy was not mobilized
for war and the military did not have modern equipment and training. This forced
the Germans to come to their aid in the Balkans and in North Africa. However
that does not mean that the Italian military didn’t fight bravely. In the
Mediterranean it was the Italian navy that successfully
transported troops and supplies to the Axis forces led by Rommel. Italian
troops fought bravely in North Africa even though they were deficient in modern
weapons and lacked mobility. The Italians
may have lacked modern weapons however they did have a small but effective
cryptologic capability.

The Italian
Army and Navy had separate codebreaking agencies that managed to exploit
important foreign crypto-systems. The Army's
codebreakers could read the codes of several foreign countries, including the
communications of US military attaches and especially those of a mr Fellers in
Cairo. The Navy's
codebreakers were very successful with Royal Navy codes and cyphers. The Italian
codebreakers were assisted in their efforts by the good work of a special
undercover squad that entered foreign embassies and copied the codes.

Army agency

The Italian
army’s intelligence agency SIM (Servizio Informazioni Militari) had a
cryptanalytic department that attacked foreign crypto-systems. This section was
headed by General Vittorio Gamba and was located in Rome. Personnel strength
was roughly 50 people (half cryptanalysts-half linguists and clerks).

The
cryptanalytic department was divided into three sub-sections:

1).
Diplomatic

2). Military
and Research

3). Commercial

Personnel
were moved from section to section based on the current priorities. The
diplomatic section was subdivided into nine groups. The military
and research section had 5 cryptanalysts. The research section was responsible
for the initial ‘break’ into hard systems. Results were sent to field units. The
commercial section’s task was to check Italian commercial codes for
irregularities.

On average
8.000 messages were intercepted each month, 6.000 were studied and out of these
3.500 translated. The codes of several countries were read including France,
Turkey, Rumania, USA, Britain, Yugoslavia and the Vatican. According to
post-war reports there was a serious shortage of foreign speaking personnel and
a lack of funds. There was also lack of IBM equipment for statistical work. The Italians
used a small number of IBM punch card machines for cryptanalysis. Initially IBM
machines were used only at the offices of the Watson Corporation in Rome. However
it was only in the last stages of the war that these machines were used
regularly.

Intercept section

The intercept
section of SIM was the one that provided messages for cryptanalysis. It had 4
stationary intercept stations in Italy and 7 mobile units in Italy, the
colonies and the occupied territories.

There was poor
liaison between the intercept section and the cryptanalytic department and all
requests had to go through SIM headquarters.

The Sezione P unit

The Italians
were often able to read foreign codes without the use of cryptanalysis. Their
secret? They had a very efficient undercover team that entered foreign
embassies and copied codes and ciphers.

This was the
Extraction Section (Sezione Prelevamento), headed
by colonel Manfredi Talamo of the Carabinieri (military police). Its operatives
were experts in entering guarded areas and opening locks. It was this
unit that copied the Military Intelligence code No11 used by the US attaché in
Cairo colonel Bonner Fellers.

Cooperation with foreign countries

Cooperation
with Germany

General Gamba
arrived unannounced at OKW/Chi in 1938 and requested cooperation in the
cryptanalytic field. The Germans initially agreed to share results on French
diplomatic and military systems. This
collaboration was expanded and provided the Germans with important cryptologic
material like the US Military Intelligence code, however relations
between OKW/Chi and SIM were not as close as with the Finns and the Hungarians.
According to Fenner, head of the cryptanalysis department of OKW/Chi, the
Italians took too long to respond to requests or did not send the agreed upon
material. An even greater problem was their resistance regarding the change of
their weak cipher systems. As the war went on relations became strained since
the Germans came to distrust the Italians.

Cooperation
with the German army‘s signal intelligence agency - OKH/In 7/VI seems to have
been poor as the Germans had little respect for Italian cipher security.

Cooperation
with Hungary

According to ‘European
Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II’ vol8, there was cooperation between
the Hungarian
cryptologic service and the Italians.

In page 21 it
says:

Liaison with the Italians on
cryptanalytic matters appears to have been very good. The Hungarians maintained
liaison officers in Rome and made the results of their work available to the
Italians.

Cooperation
with Finland

Some
intercepted traffic was sent to the Finnish cryptologic service.

Notable successes

Fellers
code

In late 1941
the Sezione P unit managed to
infiltrate the US embassy in Rome and copied crypto material. One of the systems
copied was the Military Intelligence Code No11 used by military attaches. This
allowed the Italians to decode the messages of US attaches from embassies
around the world.

The most important transmissions were those of colonel Fellers
US ,attaché in Cairo. Fellers was a
graduate of West Point and former assistant of General Douglas MacArthur. He
was posted to Cairo in October 1940. His job was to provide Washington with
detailed information on all important military operations. The British gave
him access to their facilities and shared sensitive information on upcoming
operations. All this
information was extremely important for the Axis side. The Italians shared the Military Intelligence code
with the Germans.

According to
Fenner, head of the cryptanalysis department of OKW/Chi, the Italians sent him
a copy of the codebook in 1941 but not the encipherment tables. He got these
from the Hungarians. Both sides
were able to read the Fellers messages during the first half of 1942.

Practically
all the Italian forces were concentrated in the south of Albania. This meant
that the Albanian-Yugoslav border was not well protected. A sneak attack by
Yugoslav troops had the potential to destroy the Italian forces.

In April 1941
this operation was put in motion by the Yugoslav high command. The Italians
were in a tight spot however they were able to cope with the situation through
their mastery of Yugoslav codes.

The Italian
codebreakers sent two messages to the Yugoslav divisions, written in the correct
format and ‘signed’ by General Dusan Simovic, head of the new government. These
said:

1). To the Cetinje divisional headquarters:

Subordinate troops will suspend all
offensive action and retire in the direction of Podgorica, organizing for
defense.

2). To the Kosowska Mitrovica divisional
headquarters:

Withdraw immediately with all
subordinate troops back towards Kosowska Mitrovica.

Since the
messages were enciphered with the Yugoslav army code and had all the signs of a
real order they were accepted by the divisions and the offensive was halted! The Cetinje
division requested confirmation from HQ but none came and it too retreated.
When the next day HQ responded that no retreat had been authorized it was too
late. Italian military units had occupied the abandoned areas and the Yugoslavs
had bigger problems to handle as the German invasion had led to the collapse of
their military forces.

Naval agency

The naval
intelligence agency SIS (Servizio informazioni Speciali della Royal Marina) was
divided into 4 branches. Branch B (Beta) was tasked with signals intelligence.
It was subdivided into cryptanalysis, interception and direction finding,
security and clandestine radio intercepts.

The
cryptanalytic department was located in Rome and headed by Commander Mario De
Monte. In the 1930’s they solved several French naval systems. During the war the
emphasis was on British naval and naval aviation codes. Low level British naval
codes were easily solved. The Italians also read the Royal Navy’s Administrative
Code (used from 1934 till August 1940), the Naval Code No1 and No2 (used from
August ‘40 till March ’43) plus the Naval Cypher No1 and No2 (used from 1934
till January ‘42). They acquired Naval Cypher No3 (Anglo-American Cypher used
from June ’41 till June ‘43) from the Germans and were able to solve the
encipherment. For speeding up their work they used punch card equipment in 1942.

The Italian
Air Force Intelligence Service (Servizio Informazioni Aeronautica) relied on
the Navy department for interception and cryptanalysis. In 1941 the Airforce
set up its own intercept station and sent the messages to the Navy.

Intercept section

The interception
and direction finding department of Branch Beta supplied messages and had 7
main stations in Italy and its possessions. The intercept network was comprised
of the following stations:

- Monte
Rorondo, near Rome with subcentre at Licola.

- Tirrenia,
with substations at Arma di Taggia and Toulon.

- Porto Palo,
Augusta with substation at Favignana.

- Pula,
Sardinia with substation at Porto Torres.

- Rhodes,
Greece.

- Tripoli, Libya.

- Benghazi, Libya

Additional
material was received from the Germans. The daily average was 3,000 messages.
Special intercept units were also based onboard flagships (squadrons, divisions
and convoy escorts) so that the intercepted messages could be exploited as
quickly as possible and the information communicated to the naval commanders.

Cooperation
with the Germans

During the
1930’s liaison was established with the German Navy’s cryptanalytic service B-Dienst
and some information on French codes was exchanged. The Germans also gave
information on the British Administrative code but did not share their work on
other systems.

After Italy’s
entry into the war relations became much closer and information was exchanged
on the Naval Cypher and Naval Code. Finally in 1942 the Naval Cypher No3
(Convoy Cypher) was shared.

There was a
daily exchange of recovered code groups via teleprinter and every week a
written report was sent. Branch Beta also received messages from German
intercept units.

Battle of
the convoys

In the period
1940-1943 the naval codebreakers concentrated on the codes and ciphers of the
Royal Navy. The call signs, messages and volume of traffic of British units
were analyzed in order to build up the British order of battle and identify the
movement of units in the Mediterranean. Branch Beta summarized this information
in a daily bulletin submitted to all naval commands.

The value of
codebreaking and signals intelligence was recognized by the Navy’s high command
and there was close cooperation between Branch Beta and the operational command
of the Italian Navy. According to Admiral
Franco Maugeri, head of the SIS:

‘The departure of an enemy naval
force or a convoy from East or West never escaped the SIS, and it was almost
always possible to establish within a few hours its composition and even its
objectives; which permitted immediate counter measures on the part of our naval
command, and the most Important naval encounters (Battle of Punta Stile, of
Cape Tulada, of Cape Matapan, the two actions off Sirte, and that of
Pantellaria) originated through information from the SIS’.

Another
advantage from reading British naval codes was gained by learning of their
plans to attack Italian convoys to N.Africa. Messages from British naval
aircraft (Fleet Air Arm) could be decoded very quickly and these gave an insight
into British operations, especially against Italian convoys. In those cases the
Italian command quickly warned the convoys by sending them top priority
messages called PAPA (Precedenza Assoluta sulla Precedenza Assoluta) so they
could alter their course.

Work after the surrender of 1943

In September
1943 the Italian government surrendered to the Allies and tried to exit the
war. Unfortunately the Germans were expecting such a move and quickly occupied
the country.

Mussolini was
established as head of the Italian
Social Republic covering the German occupied areas. This state continued
to use a small number of SIM codebreakers. They mostly exploited systems
already broken before the surrender. The main emphasis was on diplomatic messages
in order to get information about conditions in the liberated areas.

The Germans
were not helpful and they did not exchange results with the codebreakers of the
Social Republic.

Conclusion

Italy entered
WWII hoping to exploit Germany’s victory for its own gains. When the war
dragged on the Italian economy and the military forces were unable to deal with
the new situation and the country tried to surrender to the Allies in 1943. Despite these
shortcomings Italian army units and the Navy fought well in the Mediterranean
and North Africa.

In the cryptologic
field the Italians were hampered by the lack of personnel and resources. Still
they were able to exploit several important enemy systems and provided the
Italian leadership with the confidential messages of several foreign countries.
In the case of the Fellers messages and the Yugoslav Army code their efforts
truly had a strategic effect. Their naval codebreakers successfully solved the
codes of their main opponent, the Royal Navy, and took advantage of this in
several naval engagements.

Considering
the resources at their disposal it would be hard to ask more of the Italian
codebreakers.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Practically
all histories of WWII follow the same structure: initially the Axis powers
manage to surprise the Allies and win some great victories but then the forces
of democracy (plus the Soviet Union) rally up the troops and start winning the
battles thanks to Allied superiority in strategy, intelligence and so on. The
outcome of the war is always close in the balance. If the Germans or the
Japanese had made some different decisions things would be very different and
the Allies would be in danger of losing the war.

A book that
takes a completely different view is ‘Brute
Force’ by John Ellis. I think this book is one of the most important ones
written about WWII.

The main
point is that based on the Allied economic and manpower potential even a
negotiated surrender was beyond the grasp of the Axis forces.

Ellis shows
the incredible disparity between Axis and Allied war production (weapon systems
and raw materials) in the statistical appendix at the end of the book. Some examples
for 1939-45 production:

1). Coal
(million metric tons): Axis-2.624 , Allies-4.283

2). Crude
steel (million metric tons): Axis-191 , Allies-497

3). Aluminum
( 000 metric tons): Axis-2.503 , Allies-4.642

4). Crude oil
(million metric tons): Axis-50 , Allies-1.043

5).Tanks and
self-propelled guns: Axis-51.845 , Allies-227.235

6). Combat
aircraft: Axis-145.584 , Allies-417.219

7). Military
trucks and lorries: Axis-594.859 , Allies-3.060.354

This huge
material superiority should have made WWII easy to win for the Allies.

The problem
for the Allies is that they made very poor use of their numerical superiority.
Both in theatres against Germany and in the Far East against Japan they misused
their resources.

In the Battle
of France the Germans did not have numerical superiority. In fact their armored
force was inferior both in quantity and quality compared to the Franco-British
force.They won by concentrating their
mobile forces.

The Battle of
Britain is supposed to be an example of the outnumbered RAF winning against the
superior Luftwaffe. However if we look at fighter
strengththings were much closer.

In North
Africa the Brits managed to lose countless battles due to their lack of
coordination between infantry, armor, artillery and airpower. The author points
out that in the Second Battle of El Alamein Montgomery had significant
numerical superiority and excellent intelligence on the enemy forces but still
could not cut off and destroy the Africa Corps.

In Italy the
Germans proved masters of defense and held on to half the country with limited
forces. Allied operations showed lack of initiative and made very slow
progress.

In Western
Europe the Allies suffered heavy losses in Normandy despite having numerical
superiority and air dominance. When they broke out in late July they were
unable to cut off and destroy the majority of the German forces in the Falaise
pocket. The same thing happened in the Battle of the Bulge. The German forces
were defeated but not surrounded and destroyed.

In the
Atlantic the Germans started with a very small submarine force and it took them
too long to build it up. In the meantime the Allies were able to produce more
ships than the U-boats could sink and build up their defenses (surface ships,
escort carriers, long range naval aircraft). However it took too long for the
Allies to build up their long range naval recon squadrons.

In the air
war the performance of the RAF’s Bomber Command is criticized for being
ineffective in the period 1939-42 despite receiving a large part of the defense
budget. In the second half of the war the fixation with the night bombing of
cities did not contribute to the dislocation of German industry nor did it
knock Germany out of the war as was claimed by the RAF leadership. Moreover
these missions had a very high loss rate for Bomber Command crews.

In the
Eastern front the Germans were able to inflict very heavy losses on the Soviet
military, yet the Soviets not only made up the losses but greatly expanded the
size of their army. No matter how many formations the Germans surrounded and
destroyed the Russians were able to field new ones. On the other hand Soviet victories
were won at great cost in blood.

In the Far
East the US Army and the US Navy fought two different wars. The Army fought in
the South West Pacific while the Navy sent its Marines to retake islands of no
strategic value in the Central Pacific. McArthur’s advance in New Guinea and
the Philippines cut off Japan from its major raw material centers (especially
oil) in South Asia. On the other hand the Pacific islands could have been
bypassed. This duplication of effort was a complete waste of resources.

The author makes
a convincing case that in all these campaigns the Allies misused their numerical
(and often qualitative) superiority thus extending the war.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

In the 1930’s
Hitler was able to outmaneuver the Franco-British alliance and achieve his
foreign policy goals without a shot being fired. After gaining power he
reintroduced military service and rebuilt the armed forces. In 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland. In 1938 he
annexed Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia and occupied the rest in 1939.

At that time Germany was in the process of rebuilding its armed forces. A new German army could not be built
overnight and in the meantime France had the largest and best trained and
equipped army in Europe. At sea the huge British fleet could easily blockade
Germany.

How could
Hitler outmaneuver his opponents when they had the upper hand militarily?

The only way
for Hitler to pursue his policies was to use the Luftwaffe as a propaganda
weapon in order to intimidate his opponents.

In this
effort he was greatly assisted by the popular belief in the superiority of
airpower and the ability of the bomber to annihilate population centers.

The
unstoppable bombers and the knock-out blow

In the
inter-war period world opinion was fascinated by the progress of aviation.
Military officers disgusted by the senseless slaughter of the First World War
formulated new theories of war.

Instead of
having millions slaughter each other in the trenches countries could invest in
powerful bomber forces that would quickly destroy the enemy’s population
centers and industrial facilities.

The
‘prophets’ of this new strategic bombing theory were Billy Mitchell in the USA,
Giulio Douhet in Italy and Hugh Trenchard in the UK.

Popular
authors wrote best-sellers, such as ‘The gas war of 1940’, about coming wars
that would lead to the annihilation of cities by bomber forces.

Western
leaders were terrified of the knock-out blow, a sneak attack on their capitals
by a huge enemy bomber force. Official estimates were for hundreds of thousands
of casualties and the collapse of civil order.

Military
theorist Major-General J.F.C. Fuller
said:

London for several days will be one
vast raving Bedlam, the hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the
homeless will shriek for help, the city will be a pandemonium. What of the
government at Westminster? It will be swept away by an avalanche of terror.

The Germans
worked hard to exploit these phobias.

German successes
in airshows

During the
1930’s German planes took part in many international airshows and impressed
observers with their performance.

For example
the Bf-109 equipped with a special 1,650 HP engine won in many categories in
the 1937 Zurich air show. The prototype Bf-109V1 set a world record by reaching
755km/hour by using a 2,300 HP engine but the Germans called it Bf-109R to give
the impression that it was a model in production.

The Dornier
Do-17 bomber also took part in the Zurich competition and outflew all the
foreign fighters. Again it was not the operational model but a prototype with a
special set of 1,000 HP engines.

Outside
observers had no way of knowing that the performance of these planes was not
comparable to the standard models.

Colonel
Lindbergh’s trips to Germany

Colonel Charles Lindbergh was
a celebrity in the 1930’s and when he visited Germany, between 1936 and 1938, he
was given a tour of Luftwaffe airports and production facilities.

In his
reports to US military authorities he stressed that the Germans were world leaders
in a series of aviation technologies.

His
statements to the press presented a powerful Luftwaffe equipped with thousands
of modern planes.

Airpower
and the Spanish civil war 1936-39

The Germans
sent a small air detachment equipped with fighters, bombers and recon planes to
fight for the Nationalists in Spain. This unit gained world fame far in excess
of its contribution to the military campaign.

Pro-communist
propaganda did the Germans work for them by portraying German bomber attacks as
holocausts.

The well
known Guernica story is a case in point. The number of actual casualties was
inflated in newspaper accounts by several orders of magnitude.

This attack
on a civilian target may have turned public opinion against Germany but for the
leading circles in France and Britain it was further proof of the Luftwaffe’s
destructive power.

General
Vuillemin’s visit

In 1938 the
head of the French airforce General Vuillemin visited
Germany and was taken around to see the rebuilt German airforce.

Everywhere he
went he saw huge numbers of modern aircraft parked at runways. In exhibitions
the German planes seems to be much faster than their counterparts in other
countries.

During a trip
on his transport a new German fighter flew by so fast that it made him feel he
was stationary. With planes like these Germany was unstoppable.

What the
General didn’t know was that the same planes were taken from airport to airport
in order to impress him with their numbers.

As for the
model he saw from his plane, it was again a mirage. The German transport pilot
had skillfully reduced speed to the absolute limit and the fighter passed by at
full speed thus giving the impression of unequaled speed!

When Vuillemin
returned to France he warned the country’s leaders that the French airforce
would be easily destroyed by the Luftwaffe.

British hawks
vs doves

In Britain
the elite were split between those who supported appeasement and those who
wanted rearmament.

The first
group led by Prime Minister Chamberlain believed it was not in British best
interests to intervene in Central European affairs and wanted to avoid
excessive military spending.

The hawks led
by Vansittart, Eden and Churchill wanted to build up the armed forces and
especially the RAF in order to counter the expansionist plans of the
dictatorships.

Both sides
unwittingly supported the German disinformation effort.

The doves
presented the threat posed by the Luftwaffe as a reason for avoiding conflict.
The hawks overstated Luftwaffe strength in order to force the government into
spending more for the military.

The Germans
were able to feed disinformation to British officials both through the media
but also through a disinformation operation. In the 1930’s the Abwehr had
succeeded in identifying the British intelligence officers in Holland and had
managed to recruit some of them. At the same time they had a spy
inside MI-6.

German
officials controlled by the Abwehr became fake British spies and gave manufactured
information to the already identified British intelligence officers.

This material
was accepted by the Brits since it fitted with their view of a powerful
Luftwaffe.

German
self-deception

The German
propaganda offensive was so successful that even the German leadership was
tricked into overestimating the capabilities of the Luftwaffe. In July 1939
Hitler visited a special exhibition of the latest Luftwaffe aircraft at Rechlin
airport.

All the
models presented were clearly ahead of anything the Allies could field. With
these types into production the enemies of the Reich would be easily smashed.

Strengthened
by this display of airpower Hitler was ready to risk going to war.

There was
just a small problem. All the models presented were research models or were
using special equipment that could not be mass produced. Goering was furious at
his subordinates for tricking the Fuehrer. In 1942 he said: ‘I once witnessed a display before the war at
Rechlin, and compared with that I can only say – what bunglers all our
professional magicians are! Because the world has never before and never will
again see the likes of what was conjured up before my – and far worse, the
Führer’s – eyes at Rechlin!’

Conclusion

For most of
the 1930’s Germany was weak militarily. This weakness should have led the National
Socialist party into following a peaceful foreign policy.

Instead the
Germans were able to manipulate foreign opinion and give the impression of
great military power. Through the skillful use of propaganda and disinformation
Britain and France were unable to intervene as their Allies in central Europe
were forced to accept Hitler’s demands.

Fearing
devastating bomber attacks on their cities foreign leaders were forced to
capitulate to Hitler’s demands. At the same time Hitler’s forces were not ready
for a serious conflict.

In the end
however the German leadership became just as infatuated with the idea of an
invincible airforce and Hitler’s decision to risk global war in 1939 may be
attributed, in part, to it.

Sources: ‘Intelligence and strategy: selected
essays’, ‘Deception: The Invisible War
Between the KGB and the CIA’, ‘London calling North Pole’, ‘The War Path:
Hitler's Germany 1933-1939’, ‘The right of the line: the Royal Air Force in the
European War, 1939-1945’, Wikipedia

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

At the start
of the Soviet-German war the cipher machines used by Soviet authorities were
the K-37 ‘Crystal’ (a modified Hagelin B-211) and the cipher teleprinters B-4
and M-100.

Few details
about these machines are known. I have covered the K-37 here.
An article in agentura.ru
says that the B-4 was built in the 1930’s and used in Spain during the civil
war, in the Far East border incidents with Japan and in the Russo-Finnish war
of 1940.

A modernized
version of the B-4 called M-100 was built in 1940 and installed in American
busses in order to provide mobility (it weighed 141kg). By the summer of 1941
there were 96 sets of the M-100 in service.

In 1943 a
more compact version of the M-100 was built and given the designation M-101.

The agentura
piece does not give details on the characteristics of these machines.

German
interception of Soviet radio-teletype networks

During the
1930’s the SU started to use radio-teletype. Since 1936 the Germans had
equipment that automatically intercepted and printed this traffic.

From TICOM reports
it seems that the military networks used 2-channel teleprinters while the
economic links used multichannel systems.

The 2-channel
links employing cipher T/P assigned one channel for the cipher traffic and the
other for operator ‘chat’.

There were at
least three agencies that intercepted this traffic.

1). The Army
Ordnance, Development and Testing Group, Signal Branch Group IV C-Wa Pruef 7/IV C at an experimental
station in Hillersleben-Staats.

2). The Forschungsamt, an agency reporting
directly to HermannGoering.

In 1943 the Forschungsamt
informed the Army agency of their success in reconstructing a Soviet cipher
teleprinter used between Moscow and the Fronts. This machine was solved because
during every pause seven characters of pure ‘key’ were transmitted. A meeting
was held in September 1943 between Councilor Paetzel (head of the FA’s cipher
research department), Councilor Kroeger (the FA’s cipher machine specialist)
and the Army agency’s Dr Pietsch (head of the mathematical research department)
and Doering (head of cipher machine research).

The Soviet
machine had 6 wheels. Five enciphered the respective Baudot impulses while the
sixth controlled their movement.

The wheels had
the following positions (pins):

wheel I – 49

wheel II – 47

wheel III –
46

wheel IV – 45

wheel V – 41

wheel VI – 43

The Soviet
scrambler corresponded to the left portion of the German SZ 40/42 cipher attachment.
The Forschungsamt people stated that they would build a copy of this machine in
order to decrypt this traffic more efficiently.

More details
about the Forschungsamt solution of the Soviet cipher teleprinter are given by Bruno
Kröger in TICOM reports DF-240 and DF-241. Kröger was the FA’s cipher machine
expert and during the war he solved not only the Soviet machine but also the
Swiss diplomatic Enigma K.

The Soviet cipher
teleprinter was used on 2-channel networks and the FA’s Technical Division was
able to build equipment that automatically intercepted and printed this radio
traffic. The cipher text was then examined by Kröger’s department and it was
discovered that during transmission pauses the Russian letter П was enciphered
seven times in succession. Messages interrupted by transmission pauses were
examined and their first and last seven characters analyzed in order to uncover
the operating principles of the device.

Through this cryptanalytic
procedure it was possible to find out that the machine had 6 wheels that stepped
regularly, then their pin arrangement was identified and with the daily key
recovered all the day’s traffic could be solved.

This success
however turned out to be short lived since in late 1943 the Soviet cipher
machine was modified and no pure ‘key’ was transmitted during transmission
pauses. It seems that from then on this traffic was only examined by the Army’s
Inspectorate 7/VI.

Efforts of
the Army signal intelligence agency

The Army agency Inspectorate 7/VI assigned its own unit to intercept and evaluate this traffic. This was Group VI
operating during 1942-44 from Loetzen, East Prussia.

Unteroffizier Karrenberg,
the member of that unit assigned to work on the cipher teleprinter said in postwar
interrogations that this traffic was first intercepted in 1940 in Warsaw.
However it was not systematically collected and analyzed till summer 1943. They
called this traffic ‘Bandwurm’ because of the non-repeating cipher.

There were 8
T/P links from the Army Fronts to Moscow plus 2-3 Airforce links and a link to
the Far East command. It was also used by the NKVD. There was no direct T/P
link between the individual Front staffs. Instead messages had to be routed
through Moscow.

According to
Karrenberg the machine had two settings a large and a small. The large setting
gave a simple substitution because the wheels did not turn. This was used for
operator ‘chat’. The small setting gave an endless column substitution since
the wheels moved.

In TICOM
report I-153 he says: ‘In Autumn 1944
both the end of 'adder' and every pause in the cipher proper was preceded by
seven key letters [redacted]. Then the traffic went off the air and reappeared
in December with no external change except that the seven ‘residue' letters had
been reduced to three, suggesting a modification of the machine’. In TICOM
report I-30 he says that the attachment had 5 small wheels driven by a large
one with a period of 43.

These were the
same characteristic observed in the machine analyzed by the Forschungsamt.
However another OKH cryptanalyst named Buggisch says that the FA machine and
the ‘Bandwurm’ were different.

Buggisch was assistant
to Doering in the cipher machine research section of Inspectorate 7/VI. In his interrogation TICOM
I-64 he says that the cycle of one wheel was 37 and the others 30-80. The
machine was analyzed by the mathematics department and a cryptanalyst Troeblicher
or Troebliger played a leading part. Thanks to a ‘compromise’ of 8 messages
enciphered with the same settings 1.400 characters of pure ‘key’ were
recovered. However they were not able to solve the machine because they lacked
the manpower.

Unfortunately
Buggisch left the OKH agency in June 1944 so he did not know anything more.

The Germans
may have failed to solve this machine but they were able to decode messages ‘in
depth’ by anagramming. A machine was built that automatically printed the
Baudot traffic in Hollerith/IBM cards and these were searched for repeats but
with limited success.

More details
are available from the monthly reports found in the War Diary of Inspectorate
7/VI.

In July 1943
a report by dr Pietsch says that the examination of Russian Baudot material
revealed cipher teleprinter traffic and an effort was made to copy this traffic
either by LNA (Leitstelle der Nachrichtenaufklärung in Loetzen) or Staats (Wa
Pruef 7/IV C). Processing was to be carried out at Referat 13:

In February
and March ’44 departments b1 (general research into cipher machines) and b2
(former 13) worked on the teleprinter problem, examining the Soviet 4-letter
and 5-letter Baudot traffic and the movement of the cipher wheels of the
device:

In April ’44
department b1 stated that through analysis of the indicator groups the Soviet
Baudot traffic could be subdivided into three distinct groups. The first being
probably a cipher machine unlike the second and the third unclear:

In the
immediate postwar period the Anglo-Americans were able to solve at least two
Soviet cipher teleprinters. These were given the names Coleridge and
Longfellow.

Coleridge was
used on military networks in the European part of the Soviet Union. By March
1946 it had been solved. The Coleridge decrypts provided important intelligence
about the Soviet military’s order of battle, training activities and logistical
matters.

The other
system, Longfellow, was reconstructed by July 1946 and the settings were first retrieved
in February 1947.

It seems both
machines were ‘lost’ in 1948 when the Soviets introduced emergency changes in
their cryptologic systems.

It is not
clear if Coleridge and Longfellow had a connection with the cipher machines
that the Germans attacked during the war.

Coleridge may
have been the system the Germans called ‘Bandwurm’.

Primary
sources:

From TICOM I-2 ‘Interrogation of Dr. Huettenhain and Dr. Fricke at
Flenshurg,21 May 1945’, p2

... they also have another machine„
funkfernschreiber, which encodes during transmission. it uses the international
five impulse teleprinter code.

Both
texts indicated the pauses in transmission by - - - - - etc. The cipher tape has the peculiarity that in
passing from the preliminary call-up to the transmission pause, the Russian
letter Π,
represented in the radio alphabet by + + + + +, occurs seven times.

…………………………………………….

Now
since it was natural to assume that in this transition to and from cipher texts
the same letter Π= +
+ + + + likewise appeared seven times in each case but vas no longer
recognizable due to the encipherment the first and last seven cipher values of
all cipher texts interrupted by transmission pauses were subjected to special
study. Since the machine, once the daily key had been set up, was used very
frequently during the course of the day for sending cipher text with numerous
pauses in transmission without any new daily key being set up, rather numerous
fragments of a length of seven letters were available at known intervals of
greater or lesser lengths.

…………………………………………….

From
this it could be concluded that the first seven and the last seven letters of
each secret text came from enciphering the letter Π= + + + + + seven times and hence these
fragments of cipher text represented pure key text. The following study of
these fragments of pure key text led to a recognition of the fact that the
first impulses show the same repeated picture in the chain of plus and minus
impulses at an interval of 37, the second impulses at an interval of 39, the
third impulses at an interval of 41, the fourth and fifth at an interval of 43
and 45 respectively (the intervals may have been 35, 37, 39, 41, 43). This
showed the length of the five cipher wheels and their cam pattern according to
the day’s setting. Each cam crest caused the inversion of the plain impulse
into its opposite while a cam trough left a plain impulse unchanged. The wheels
regularly moved one step after each cipher letter.

With
this the decipherment of the cipher text had been accomplished. The
reconstruction of the cam pattern of the wheels, which was set up new each day,
was easily accomplished.

From TICOM DF-241
‘The Forschungsamt’- Part I, p25

18.
The Russian radio [2-channel] cipher machine with a channel for plain text and
a channel for cipher text could be studied after the Technical Division had
constructed a receiving device which at the same time removed the scrambling.
The five elements of the radio alphabet [bands] ware enciphered singly through
five wheels which move evenly. The wheels could be set up new each day
corresponding to the daily key; but the period was constant and invariable. It
was possible to solve this completely.

From TICOM DF-241
‘The Forschungsamt’- Part IV, p38

It
need only be mentioned here that the 2-channel cipher machine was withdrawn
from use a few days after the Forschungsamt succeeded in solving it. When the
machine was put into use again some weeks later, the cipher device of the
cipher channel had been so altered that solution by the previous method was no
longer possible since, when switching the machine from procedure traffic to
cipher text and between a pause in transmission and cipher text, the switching
became effective at once and the idling period of 7 elements had dropped out.
That the same machine was involved was proven only by the receiver device which
still broke up the scrambled text into a clear and a cipher text in the same
manner as before. Because OKH had great interest in this traffic and its own
receivers did not work perfectly, and because further detailed work at this
time (Autumn 1943) in the Forschungsamt was not possible, OKH received all new
traffic on this machine for processing.

The subject of this interrogation was
confined to Karrenberg’s work on Russian Baudot letter ‘strip’, traffic known
to the Germans as ‘BANDWURM’ and not to be confused with Russian 5-letter,
traffic also carried on Baudot lines.

The Germans had not captured any of
the apparatus used but considered that it consisted of two parts: 1) a
Baudot-teleprinter with the letters of the Russian alphabet (excluding q and
'g') and figure and letter shift making 32 characters in all; 2) a cipher
attachment consisting of 5 small wheels driven by one large wheel.

Each of the small wheels had a pattern
of positive and negative impulses and each wheel worked in conjunction with one
of the five impulses produced by pressing a key of the teleprinter, the effect being
to add a positive or negative impulse to each of the five impulses produced by
the letter being sent. This in effect means adding a letter of key to the clear
letter to produce a cipher letter.

Depths were frequent on the traffic
intercepted by the Germans, but they do not seem to have made any attempt to
reconstruct the wheel patterns. In the case of the driving wheel they came to
the tentative conclusion that it had a period of 43. The preambles of messages
were always enciphered which resulted in stereotyped and known beginnings to
messages. The machine setting for a message was indicated by means of a two
figure number which presumably referred to a table of settings; a different
table was used each day.

Before the actual start of a message a
passage of operator's chat was sent enciphered by the addition of a constant
letter to each letter of the clear text. This letter was then sent en clair-
and repeated three times. The object of this was to see that the receiver had
his machine net up correctly.

The system was used by the Army and
Air Force and to a lesser extent by the N.K.W.D.

P.W. stated that he believed the
‘Bandwurm’ traffic was first intercepted in 1940 in Warsaw. As far as he had
been able to make out no interest had then been taken in it. The first actual
knowledge we had of a traffic with the same external features (chat.
indicators, eto.) was in summer 1943 when the first real interest was taken in
it and the traffic was sent to Berlin for analysis. He understood that it went
to a Dr. Pietsch and Doering.

There were a number of links usually
varying according to the number of armies (Frontstaebe). The maximum number was
8. One end of each link was always in Moscow, the other would be mobile, and
move with the armies. There were also one or two Airforce links. There was also
supposed to be a link with the Far East. Traffic was heavier from the
‘outstations’ to Moscow.

and page 3

In Autumn 1944 both the end of 'adder'
and every pause in the cipher proper was preceded by seven key letters
[redacted]. Then the traffic went off the air and reappeared in December with
no external change except that the seven ‘residue' letters had been reduced to
three, suggesting a modification of the machine. In general it is clear that some of the features of the key at
least have not changed in the last nine months.

From TICOM I-64 ‘Answers by Wm. Buggisch ofOKH/Chi to Questions sent
by TICOM’ , p2-3

1. Russian Systems

In 1943 B heard that the Forschungsamt
(no individual names given) had claimed some success on a Russian teletype
machine, and had re-created the action of the machine. It was a machine with a
very long cycle being not prime but the product of several smaller cycles--like
the SZ42. B. did not know the cycle of all of the individual wheels or any
other details. He heard this from DOERING, who was then doing his research on
the T-52, but liaison with the FA was bad anyway (Major Mettig was particularly
opposed to the SS taint) and the next he heard was that the traffic found by
the FA had stopped. B. remembered only that the cycle of one wheel was 37; the
others, he thought, varied widely from 30-80.

Late in 1943 and increasingly in 1944
OKH itself began to intercept non-Morse, 5-impulse traffic (called ‘Hughes’ by
B.). The Mathematics Referat went to work on it, with TROEBLICHER playing a
leading part. At the end of 1943 the Russians created a ‘kompromiss’, giving a
depth of about 8 messages with the same setting. With this they were able to
recover 1400 letters of pure key and at the same time to ascertain that the
traffic being passed was the 5-figure code, with regular station chat
enciphered at the same time on the machine (Suggests a machine in constant
motion as described by Karrenberg).Part of the depth was created within the
same long message, so that the machine had a cycle, at least in this one case
of about 1450 letters. The actual number was thought to be very significant by
the Germans, as it was prime and so could not be the product of smaller cycles
in any way that they could imagine. This differentiated it from the machine
which the FA had broken. The Germans postulated either a single tape machine
like the T43 or a machine in which the motions of the wheels influenced each
other,1 and 2 affecting 3, 3 affecting 5, etc. as in the T52. They were never
able to prove one theory or the other. (B. apologized for this. Said they did
not have enough mathematicians to tackle the fascinating problem of determining
what the motion must be to create this cycle. Seemed quite convinced that there
would be a unique solution to the problem.) After this experience they devised
Hollerith machinery to locate depths, but in fact they only found three or four
more cases and none of these gave additional cycle evidence or even furnished
as much pure key as the first one. B. left the section in June 1944. He thinks
the traffic slumped off in the summer of 1944 and LNA took steps to try to
improve the reception, as they believed the traffic was still there.
TROEBLICHER was detailed to this end of the work at this time. B. stressed one
fact which had surprised him, that they had never had information about either
of these machines (he assumed that the one the FA broke was not the same
because of the difference on cycles.) from PW or agent sources.

B. said in passing that their own
security idea on the subject of wheel machines of this sort was that the cycle
should not be the product of smaller periods(as in Hagelin) even if this was
long. Mutual influence of wheels should be used to avoid this, but at the same
time care must be taken that too short a period was not created in the process.
This in fact had apparently been done by the Russians, but the fact that it was
not repeated suggested to him that they might have seen the weakness and
corrected it.

Troeblicher
is mentioned in CSDIC (U.K.) SIR 1717, appendix A as Troebliger (Uffz). He worked in Group IV, Referat 1b as an analyst
on Russian Baudot traffic.

Acknowledgments: It was Frode Weierud who first
pointed to me the German interest in the Soviet teleprinter and the
characteristics of the machine solved by the Forschungsamt in 1943. Credit also
goes to Randy Rezabek for finding and uploading to the internet the
interrogations of Karrenberg since they contain lots of information on the cipher
machine.